Main functionalities of the knowledge practices environment (KPE) affording knowledge creation practices in education

The present paper examines how to develop technology-mediated educational practices from acquisition and participation type approaches towards more sustained, collaborative knowledge creation, where students’ work is organized around developing shared epistemic objects (artefacts, processes, practices). Typical forms of technologymediated collaborative practices in education are illustrated through a framework of ‘stairs of collaboration’ related to three metaphors of learning: knowledge acquisition, participation and knowledge creation. It is maintained that typical functionalities in existing educational webtechnologies, such as various Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), are quite inflexible and inadequate for shared work on epistemic objects. The main focus in the present paper is on describing how a basic platform supporting collaborative knowledge creation, called Knowledge Practices Environment (KPE), has been built to provide affordances to work around epistemic objects and practices.